


Maybe then they could understand each other

by Leu (Karaii)



Series: Naruto rarepair generator [13]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Aburame flavoured body horror cw, Both Shino and Hinata seem to be very similar to me, Gen, I hope they grew up to be close friends, in that they both struggle to communicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28507098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karaii/pseuds/Leu
Summary: “Use your words, Shino-kun,” Kurenai-sensei said gently.“I am sad,” Shino said, “because everything is so large.”
Relationships: Aburame Shino & Hyuuga Hinata
Series: Naruto rarepair generator [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1372372
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Maybe then they could understand each other

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt called for a fic using Shino and Hinata. Kurenai-sensei snuck in, too.

Hinata’s stutter got worse when she was nervous, this Shino knew.

“It is all right,” he repeated. “Crying is a privilege not all shinobi have. Therefore, cherish it.”

Hinata’s stutter was so bad he couldn’t understand it. But Shino was a self-proclaimed expert in micro-expressions: the subtle twitch of a shoulder, a finger; a shift of the knee. Hinata was angry.

Shino went down to his knees. There was a flea dying in the grass, cast-off from Akamaru’s latest bath, and he gently gathered it onto his finger. “Chemicals in human skin are toxic to certain bugs,” he said, by rote. “They absorb everything without discrimination, to their detriment. Therefore, we Aburame are bred not to produce–“

“S-S-S-Shino-k-k-kun,” Hinata said. “S-St-t-top.”

The flea would die if he didn’t do something, but, then again, it would die even if he tried everything. It was all, in the end, quite useless.

Unfortunately, the Aburame were physiologically incapable of tears. He leaked fruit flies, instead, their little proboscis seeking sugar to counteract the salt that Shino’s cell walls provided. _To what end?_ Shino had asked his father, once, and his father had replied: _To strike fear into the hearts of our opponents, even when we are at our most vulnerable._

“Hinata-chan, Shino-kun!”

It was Kurenai-sensei. She’d watched the tableaux of them unfold from afar, and had come to fix it up again.

“Did you make Hinata-chan cry, Shino?”

“N-N-N-o-”

“Yes,” Shino interrupted. “I believe I must have.”

“NO!” Hinata was crying again, but this time, Shino understood, it was from frustration. He believed he understood that chemical emotion, of being incapable of communication. The Aburame had different tells than normal humans, and human body language was Shino’s third or fourth language, if one did not count the flashing of fireflies or the tell-tale vibration of locusts. But how could he let her know?

“Hinata-chan,” Kurenai-sensei said. “Take a deep breath. In. Out. Good girl.”

Shino breathed in and out as well, diffusing oxygen into his blood and body cavity so that his hundred thousand selves could breathe, too. For a minute, everyone concentrated solely on gas exchange. Then, Kurenai-sensei nodded decisively.

“Do you feel better?” She said.

Hinata nodded, but chose not to speak. Her body language was small. All of her was small. Shino liked small things: he liked gently exploring the antennae of ants and the legs of crickets. They were both cute and functional, which made him happy. But Hinata was not feeling happy, he understood. Hinata was often sad, and angry, and frustrated, her body too small for the profundity of emotions that wrecked it from the inside, like Shino’s body had been too small for the hundred thousand insects that had colonized him as a boy, that he’d encouraged to grow, because he had felt so sad when they died, to the point where his father had had to come in and destroy half of them, destroy half of Shino’s happiness, to let him live.

“I apologize, Hinata-san,” Shino said, subdued. “For making you sad.”

“It wasn’t you,” Hinata said, very, very softly. “It was, um…something my father said.”

“Oh,” Shino said. “Then I am only sad that you are sad.”

Hinata huffed out an odd noise. He thought he was an expert in micro-expressions, but this one was hard to parse, until he heard the melody of it, and he understood that Hinata was giggling. Shino leaked a couple of fruit flies before he got a hold of them again.

“Haha,” he said, instead.

Kurenai-sensei’s hand gently placed itself on his hair, unafraid of the myriad insects that immediately rushed to explore the foreign object that had invaded their nest. Shino was grateful she did not pat it, because it might harm his headlice, which he had very carefully cultivated off the skull of a dying shinobi, because they would have died without his interference, and death had always made him sad, to his detriment.

“Thank you, Shino-kun,” Hinata said, as quiet as two blades of grass. “I’m s-sorry I upset you.”

“I am not upset,” Shino said. “Why? Because it is not an emotion beneficial to shinobi.” Neither were cultivating harmless fruit flies, or secreting away useless headlice, but no one had to know.

Hinata bit her lip and looked away. Kurenai-sensei’s hand tensed in his hair.

“I lied,” Shino said abruptly. “I am upset.” He looked down into the grass, where Akamaru’s flea had died. “I am quite sad, I think.” Human words were difficult. He wished they could hear the shrill cries of the cicada, their lives as long as a day, living only to die. Maybe then they could understand each other.

“It’s okay to be sad,” Kurenai-sensei said. “It’s okay to be frustrated. Don’t deny your own feelings.” She sat down on the ground, and patted the grass, and they sat next to her, both he and Hinata, her toy soldiers with feelings too large for their bodies. “When I’m sad, I practice genjutsu. I can channel those emotions into something productive.”

Hinata wilted, and murmured something subvocally. 

“What if you are too sad to practice genjutsu?” Shino said, automatically giving her voice as he did for his insects.

“Well,” Kurenai-sensei said. “Then I talk to a, um–to someone.”

“Asuma-sensei?” Shino guessed. He had never spoken to the foul-smelling Sarutobi, all of him afraid of the man’s casual fire breathing, but if Kurenai-sensei meant him, then he would give it a try.

“No! I mean,” Kurenai-sensei hid her face in her hands. “Ach!” She composed herself and put her hands on her knees. “Right. I talk to someone like Asuma-san. A friend.”

Shino thought of talking to his cousin, Aburame Torune, but Torune-san had gone on a mission for Danzo-sama years ago and had never come back. He wondered if he could talk to the descendants of Torune-san’s nanoparticle-sized rinkaichu, the ones that he now housed near his eighth chakra gate, and the very last he’d ever use in a fight, if it came to it, because they were so precious to him. It was too risky to let them out, though, and not just because they devoured flesh nigh-indiscriminately. They simply had no ears to hear him.

“What if you have no friends?” Shino asked.

“Excuse me!” Kurenai-sensei said. “Am I not your friend, Shino-kun? Is Hinata-chan not your friend?”

“I believe you are my teammates,” Shino said.

“Y-you can t-talk to me, Shino-k-kun,” Hinata said. “U-um, if you d-d-don’t mind.”

Shino thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Then I extend the same courtesy to you, Hinata-san.” She was his friend, he thought, and the weevils that lived in his esophagus scurried up to his mouth, startled by the production of acid. He swallowed them reflexively.

“Wonderful!” Kurenai-sensei said. “Whenever you feel sad, I want you two to find each other, and talk about why you are sad.” She held Hinata’s hand in her right and Shino’s in her left. “Hinata, Shino. Listen to me very carefully. To be a shinobi is to endure, but endurance is not built through denial. Talking through your feelings is like flexing a muscle. Someday you’ll get strong enough that you won’t have to say anything, but, until then, I want you two to go through the motions, okay?”

“Understood,” Shino said.

“Okay,” Hinata said. “Um. W-why don’t you s-start? S-Shino-k-k-kun.”

Shino paused. Why was he sad? It was harder than he realized to pinpoint the origin. He was sad Akamaru’s bath had killed his fleas, the very same Shino had befriended only a day prior; that Kurenai-sensei had sat upon five ants that were still sending out pheromones of panic and pain; that his father and his father’s father and his father’s father’s father had chosen to sacrifice tear ducts for nesting grounds, because they were unnecessary to a shinobi; that all he had left of Torune was a square milimeter’s worth of inbred bugs that he could not communicate with, jailed away near his heart, that would only be released upon his death, to devour him, to devour everything, until they, too, died for lack of a heart to keep them.

“Use your words, Shino-kun,” Kurenai-sensei said gently, through the small mist of insects that flitted about in response to Shino’s upset.

“I am sad,” Shino said, “because everything is so large.”

“Very good, Shino-kun,” Kurenai-sensei said. “That’s a good start. I’m proud of you for admitting that.”

Hinata squeaked when Kurenai-sensei turned to her.

“U-uh-um,” Hinata said, bright red, already sweating. “I-I-I’m,” she bit her lip, and closed her eyes, and said, like it was being torn away from her, “I’m sad I am so small! And weak! And useless!” She gasped, and started crying.

“Shh, Hinata-chan, I’m proud of you for saying that, it’s okay…”

Shino stared at Hinata’s arched back, the way she was trying to disappear into her hands, as if by sheer will she could shove the tears back into her eyes.

“I can’t cry,” he said. “That makes me sad, too.”

Hinata wailed. Kurenai-sensei looked like she had bitten off more than she could chew.

“But,” Shino said louder. “I have fruit flies, instead.” They poured out from behind his sunglasses, buzzing insistently, drowning the cacophony of Hinata’s upset. “They’re small, and weak, and useless, and my father would tell me to get rid of them, if he knew, because they’re not functional. But! I find them really cute! I like them a lot!”

He plowed on like there was a gate open, and he couldn’t stop himself.

“They eat fruits by licking them with a really long tongue! It’s called a proboscis and I’ve bred mine to have really, really long ones, because it’s super cute! Everyone thinks they’re pests, even my own family, and that makes me really, really sad, because they’re not! They like bananas and beer and–and–” Shino hiccuped oddly and coughed out a whole rhino beetle, which fell flat on its back and started wiggling its little legs, incapable of turning upright on its own.

Shino stopped and stared at it, feeling abruptly quite tired.

To his surprise, Hinata reached out, and very gently, turned it around. It rushed back up his knees, up his shirt, and neck, meeting a dead end when Shino would not open his mouth, his lips a thin line of self-disappointment.

“U-Um,” Hinata said. “I-I think they’re cute, t-too.”

The beetle scurried into his open mouth and down his throat.

“You do?” He said, stunned.

“Yes,” Hinata said, and tried to wipe at the tears and snot that now made a mess of her face. “I-I used to w-watch them, in the garbage.”

“You two…” Kurenai-sensei placed her hand on both their heads, this time. “You two are the cutest students I’ve ever had, okay! I think you are both very adorable, and strong!”

Shino’s headlice ran to the base of his skull, afraid of the force of Kurenai-sensei’s hold. But Shino felt very happy. He had two new friends, now, and one of them even liked his fruit flies.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
